When Ruby Tuesday put out the call to employees all over the country for summer workers at its location in Park City, Utah, in 2013, applications came rolling in from far and wide. Among those who wanted to apply for the gig with free housing and paid expenses were Oregon employee Andrew Herrera and Missouri employee Joshua Bell. But there was a catch: The chain was only hiring women for the jobs to avoid having to figure out coed housing.

Bell and Herrera, feeling like they were missing out on more money and work experience, complained to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission—the federal agency in charge of combating workplace discrimination. They claimed the restaurant was discriminating against them because of their gender. The EEOC agreed that the men had been unfairy discriminated against because they were men, and some experts and activists are saying that may actually be a good thing for women.

On Thursday the agency filed a lawsuit against Ruby Tuesday arguing that the sex-specific hiring practices violated Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and “deprived individuals of employment opportunities and otherwise adversely affected their status as internal applicants.”

At first glance it might be tough for anyone who knows how far women still have to go for workplace equality to feel sympathy for these guys—women famously earn much less than men on average, even in traditionally female-dominated fields. Some women experience discrimination when they try to take maternity leave. Men just out of college with the same degrees and jobs still make more than women, and the higher a woman rises in business, the less likely she is to be paid as much as her male counterparts.

But while men aren’t discriminated against nearly as often as women are, they definitely experience workplace harassment and unequal treatment. Between 2010 and 2013, men brought more than 16 percent of the sexual harassment charges the EEOC received.

Fighting these incidents can serve a critical role in protecting all workers from discrimination, especially in jobs such as restaurant work—low-wage employment in which women are often exploited.